International at home

So, this weekend I travelled to DC in order to sit in on a PhD international psychology class. This is where I have decided to focus my efforts and energies and am gearing up for the changes. Yesterday, I chose to travel by Megabus to DC;I anticipated having time to myself to read, listen to music or to sleep. None of this happened. I sat next to a young woman who struck up a conversation with me. Turns out, she is from Bahrain and is a med student doing her month-long elective at CHOP. I learned that she is Sunni and heard, first hand, her experience of Arab spring and the struggle that her country is currently experiencing between the Sunni and Shiite. It was a very fascinating conversation; we wound up exchanging information. I am curious as to where this will take me. Today, I opted to return by train, again with the same expectation that I had for the bus. Yet again, I was incorrect in this. I wound up sitting next to a woman who is in the US, with asylum status, from Bagdad. From her, I learned about the struggles of being a refugee in another country, the hardships, the fear, the desire to be accepted, the need to provide for family. These last 36 hours I recognized, in a very real way, that the global concerns are not in "that country over there", but right here. If we will just take the time to sit next to, to listen to and engage in conversation with those who are different from us, the possibility of learning and empathezing is remarkable available. I feel blessed and moved to have been priviledged to meet these women and bear witness to their stories, even in the few short hours we had together.